Ashes in a Jar
by rose-tinted-bones
Summary: A year ago, Dick Grayson disappeared from the streets of Gotham and Blüdhaven, and maybe it's chance that he bumps into his former nemesis in Budapest's dark streets.


**AN** : My first dip in the Dick/Slade pool and I'm both terrified and excited. I'm not really familiar with DC's comicverse (I'm more familiar with Marvel's since that's where I started when it comes to comics) so I'm taking a bit of a liberty here.

 **CW/TW** : There's non-con/rape at the start. Nothing graphic, and it's not even between the main characters but I'm just putting this here to be safe.

* * *

Budapest nights are cold. It's not surprising, though. Gotham had always been on the hotter side of the scales and having grown up in the city had left him used to the weather. Budapest was different, higher up on the map, where summers were dry and winters seeped into his bones. Dick's not complaining. He's grown used to the cold – the bite of the wind, leaving his lips chapped and his skin raw – no longer new to him. A simple adjustment of his coat can keep it at bay for the moment, just enough for him to get home. He keeps his head down, his hair falling into his eyes as he walks through the dark streets, a tightly clutched paper bag rubbing against his leg from time to time.

The street lamps lit the way, not entirely submerged in darkness. The wind whistled in his ears, the sound of snow and stone crunching under his boots echoing. His vision was clear, the buzz from his last drink slowly fading into the distance. He hurried his steps.

There's a prickle, a feeling – running on instinct, thrumming in his veins – and Dick wants to pause, to make sure that there wasn't someone purposefully following him. It was a sense he couldn't switch off, it had sunk too deep for him to forget, no matter how many glasses and bottles keep piling up.

He glances around, at the closed storefronts and the dimmed lights, sees a shadow of his own reflection on a glass pane. Dick shakes his head, and continues on.

The sky is dark, no stars are about. It makes the nights a tad bit colder. If the moon had been out, it would have shed more light, and if Dick had been on the rooftops, he'd see the silhouette of a city blanketed in night.

This wasn't good. He was remembering too much.

It wasn't good to remember. It was too painful – remembering left him gasping, the breath stolen from his chest as the ugliness reared its head at him and attacked. Remembering left him waking up in the night, eyes wide for a moment before the screaming begins and continues on until his voice grows hoarse, tired eyes searching for the dawn, another day to live through.

Funny, he sometimes can't help but remember when he only wants to forget.

The feeling returns – a telltale prickle at the back of his neck – and he turns, half-expecting to see a shadowed man and a nefarious smile on his lips. He only sees the empty street and the convenience store in the distance, its neon lights almost dim in the distance.

Closing his eyes is dangerous—in the cold like this, and the dark, when he's teetering on the edge of a whiskey-colored tinge, and it's pretty much just willpower keeping him standing—but the only way to get through this is just to breathe, and continue. It's the only thing he knows how to do.

"Just a bit more," He says to himself, turning back and walking forward, his gait steady.

He inches closer to the shape solidifying in the dimness, the ugly pasty white of the apartment walls distinct in the dark; the throbbing that had made its existence all the clearer grows sharper and fuller than he could imagine so—

He just has to keep moving; he just has to drag his right leg and then the left; one step at a time, and eventually—it's just physics; just laws of motion and shit; eventually—

It's just a matter of time. Time and sheer fucking stubbornness. Sounds like the story of his life again. Sometimes, some days, he asks himself how he can get through on sheer repetition alone, and it's only choice that keeps him afloat.

The cold is so deep when the sun goes down—so complete, so penetrative; it digs through your skin and burrows in your bones and rattles through your every capillary; all the marrow in your skeleton freezes crystal-cold, and then you breathe it back out, and the iciness burns your throat on the way up.

He's just over a hundred feet away, and he can already feel his hands itching, to rip the paper bag open and pull the bottle out, to run and burst into the door and into the safety of his own room, boarded-up windows and all.

Dick makes it past a dark alley to the side when he hears it – a muffled crying, followed by a harsh whisper.

There's the sound of a scuffle – a struggle – and his fists grow tight, knuckles turning white. He shouldn't. It wasn't his problem. There's no rule in life stating that he had to rush into every situation like a goddamn hero. They have people for that – police, city watch, whatever you call it – and it shouldn't be up to people like him to come bringing justice.

The muffled crying disappears for a moment, and he breathes easier, and he doesn't realize he's closed his eyes so tightly. A gasp – and, soon, a sob follows. There's a rush of words – Hungarian – and even if Dick still takes a while to translate them in his head, even he knows what fear and terror sound like – no matter what language it's spoken.

"Damn it," Dick seethes, biting his lip, before turning to the alley. It's dark – pitch black – and the dead streetlamp on this side of the road was certainly not helping. It takes a bit for his eyes to adjust, for him to make out the figures, both on the ground, one over the other.

He doesn't know how they look like, if they're male or female, but all he needs to know is that the one under the other is clawing at the ground, sobbing, harshly silenced cries of 'help' reaching his ears.

Please, please, don't do this, Dick.

He tastes blood as he bites his lip, the pain chasing away the words from his head. He doesn't need that right now – doesn't need it ever – let the ghosts remain ghosts and buried in the past. Let his guardian's last words stay where they should – in the nightmares that come before the sunrise.

He adjusts the grip on the bottle, and making the distance in two seconds, slams it against the man's temple. There's a cry of pain, glass breaking and shattering into many broken pieces and the smell of spilled bourbon. The man crumples to the side, groaning, still conscious, and Dick grabs the other away from him. It's a boy, looking barely eighteen in the shadows, tear stains and bruises on his face, light blue eyes wide and scared. Dick looks down and sees his jeans bunched by his knees, boxers haphazardly pushed down and thighs clear and—

"Go," He whispers, can't bring himself to make his voice louder as his vision begins to blur, and he's colder than ever, and he can smell it – the scent of citrus – and he can feel it, the creeping hands on the insides of his thighs, pushing his legs wider, and he wants to close them, keep them shut, wants to say no, fight back, but he can't – he has to obey, he has t— "Run!"

The half-shout makes the boy jump, and Dick feels his hands shaking as the terror in the other's eyes was too familiar, too painful to look at, so he turns away and keeps his eyes on the man still on the ground, ignoring the boy pulling his jeans up and running away. He doesn't realize that he's still holding the bottleneck and lets it slip from his fingers, letting it lie among the pieces.

He doesn't really notice it – all he sees is the man, on the ground, who had his hands on a boy, who had kept him down so that he could rape him. The whiskey-tinge of his vision flashes red, and all he sees is not the stranger but someone else, someone familiar – the sole reason he disappeared in the first place.

He grabs the man by the collar of his jacket and slams him against the brick wall. The man trips, his own jeans tangled by his ankles, and Dick tastes blood as he seethes.

"You piece of shit," He bites out, his voice gravel. "You fucking piece of shit."

He rears his other hand back and punches the man in the face. He hears the impact, of his knuckle against the other's cheekbone, the sound of skin against skin, a pained groan. He feels it in his hand, the dulled ache. He doesn't care.

"You disgusting—" Punch. "—fucking piece of shit." And another.

The man's face lips grow red, and he sees blood, and Dick breathes, his fist still raised. The cheek looked bruised, the man's eyes closed, as if unconscious, and he shudders. Dick grimaces and lowers his fist, lets the man crumple to the ground. He was still alive, breathing – that was certain – and Dick would have given anything to punch those lights out, to keep on punching until the light dimmed and disappeared, until the other could feel every inch of terror and fear the boy had. He wants to – so bad – and another man's death wouldn't do much to even the scales.

Dick's hands were already bright red with all the blood he's spilled.

"Shit," Dick whispered, his head pounding, stepping back. He shouldn't have. He shouldn't have gotten himself involved. Damn it. Glass breaks under his boots, and he curses again.

He leaves the man on the ground, doesn't care, let him die in an alley like the rat that he was, what Dick needs was to not remember. He steps back into the main street and the apartment building was just one block away, but – no – the drawer under his table was empty, and he needs to forget, needs to burn it away like the glass shards in his throat.

"Fuck," Dick growls, glaring balefully at the unconscious asshole in the alley, before stalking back up to the convenience store.

He lets his anger keep him warm, ignoring the chilly wind as he pushes the store doors open. Fluorescent lights blind him for a moment, stilling, before the sound of someone clearing their throat behind him makes him duck his head and get out of the way of the entrance. He makes it to the back and grabs another bottle from the lower shelf, the cheapest one. The guy behind the counter is the same one that punched his item a few minutes ago – Dick's seen him from time to time, and he ignores the amusement in the cashier's eyes – and he rummages his pocket for his wallet, bringing it up, only for his bloodied hand to hit the light.

Dick's eyes meet the man's, and there's wariness to it. He can't blame the other, Dick only makes it to the convenience store for the booze or the occasional sandwich, he doesn't really talk much and the cashier's probably pegged him for another drunkard. Still, a bloodied hand is a bloodied hand, and that shit can make anyone cautious.

"I fell, glass broke, cut myself," Dick lies, rolling his eyes to add to the deception. He grabs a few tissues from the counter and started wiping his hand.

After he manages to clean himself up and have over what little cash he had, Dick grabs the paper bag and makes it out, bumping into the other customer behind him – some tall, big guy – and makes it out to the entrance. He steps to the side and drops to the low ledge. He just needs to breathe, lets it all out. The throbbing in his head – a muffled drumbeat that never stopped – continued, and if he concentrates enough, it's almost like he can hear it. He knows he can't drink here. He needs to get back to his room.

But, for a moment, he just wants to breathe.

Fuck it, he thinks. Bottle in hand, he unscrews the cap and tips his head back, tastes the burn of the bourbon on his tongue and down his throat. Warmth follows, chasing the cold out, and he can already feel it settle in his stomach – easily, the last thing he had eaten was a waffle almost half a day ago. The throbbing doesn't disappear, it never does, but the intensity lessens, enough for him to stay in that addictive numbness. That's what he needs.

He doesn't need to remember or feel.

He just needs to breathe and, just, breathe. Some days, it's enough.

If someone had told him, a year ago, that he'd end up like this, he would have laughed. Laughed until he was red in the face and there were tears in the eyes. The irony isn't lost on him. Life operates on little ironies, and Dick's is just one more peg in a well-oiled machine.

He takes another swig, gulps it down, and relishes the burn. Some days, it's enough.

"Penny for your thoughts?" A voice, deep and gruff, masculine, comes from his left and Dick snorts.

"No deal. Make it a bottle and I'll tell ya." Another swig. The cold can't touch him, not now, not for this moment. Some days, it's enough.

"Or you'll pass out on me after bleeding my wallet." A huff of derision – or maybe amusement. Dick's not sure, but it makes the corner of his lip turn up for a moment.

"You got me. There goes my master plan." God, he hates the taste of whiskey. He really does, were it not for the influx of heat that roiled around his mouth. The pounding's gone from the forefront of his mind to the peripheries, noticeable only if Dick actually thought about it. The edges of his vision are swimming and only the floating, listless numbness reverb around his head. Maybe it's the dullness that has his neurons taking a while to connect the dots and realize that the man was talking to him in English.

He turns slightly, catches sight of the man's jeans and boots, before returning his gaze to the bottle. "You a tourist?"

"Hmm." Cryptic. Dick can deal with secrecy. He's had to, in the last twelve months. Bruce would be proud.

Bruce.

His heart squeezes so tight that he drops the bottle, the muted clink of the glass against the asphalt barely noticeable in the ringing of his ears at the name. He chokes in a breath, ragged and exhausted, as the numbness fades and is replaced by a torrent of regret. It's enough for him to drop his head and suck in a sob.

It takes him a while to get his bearings straight, for him to tip his head back and lean against the convenience store's dirty wall and his mouth hangs open, just breathing. He concentrates on breathing – in and out, in and out, in and out – until the perpetual weight on his chest lightens for a moment, just enough for him to keep going. He doesn't open his eyes, not when they're still wet. He doesn't want to cry, not anymore. He can't. He doesn't deserve to.

The man must have gone, probably thought of him as mad. Dick is only half-sure he isn't, and on the days where the noon light seep through the crevices of the boarded windows and prod him to wakefulness, he's not really sure of anything. There might have been a time where he was sure of what he wanted – to be a hero, to follow in his guardian's footsteps – but ever since, all he knows is that alcohol keeps the ghosts at bay and the nightmares into the corners for a while. Sometimes, that's enough.

"Do you drink to remember, or to forget?"

Both. Neither. He thinks. Maybe it's the truth. Maybe it's a lie.

"I don't know," he answers – the question was posed neutrally, he couldn't glean any emotion from it. No pity or disgust, wariness or amusement. He can almost envy it.

The timber, though, it creeped at the back of his head, into the sinews of his thought. It knocked on the door of his memory, another unwanted intruder itching to demolish whatever pathetic control Dick still had over his life. Familiarity was bad. It was dangerous. It will just keep reminding him of his greatest mistakes.

"I never took you for an alcoholic, little bird." There's something in the man's voice, something hard – chafing and gritted – and Dick has no idea what it is, but it sounds oddly like disappointment. Well, he can go fuck himself and join the club. Nobody can lead the Dick-is-a-disappointment party better than Dick Grayson himself.

He ducks to paw at the fallen bottle by the side of his boot, tipped over and the content spilling to the ground. He curses, just grateful that half of it is still inside. He doesn't have much in the way of money, and he can't afford to waste shit. Pathetic, really. A pathetic little bird. Little bird.

He stills, a grey eye flashing in his mind. The fingers around the neck of the bottle tighten, and he clutches it close his chest. He can see it already, if he closed his eyes – a strong jaw, bearded, a stern eye and almost snow-white hair combed back. He can already replay and recount all the minute changes of expression across that perpetually stoic face, the glow of amusement and smugness in the mere tilt of a smirk, the incision-sharp gaze that always made Dick feel as if he was transparent. The caustic wit thrown in the midst of jabs and punches, bordering on the edge of insult but only served to fuel a caped crusader's fire.

It was too much. He could feel the glass starting to break in his grip as images of fighting Deathstroke on the rooftops of Gotham played like a zoetrope in his head, a reel of moments where there was nothing but the exhilaration of fighting his foe, a high-stakes game where it was just Dick and his skill against the mercenary.

"Slade." He whispers aloud, needing, wanting to believe. If it was another ghost – just another flash of all his regrets – he can't, not now. He needs him to be real – he doesn't know what for: maybe to fight? To blame? To make sure that he's still Dick Grayson – a Dick Grayson with the past of a hero – and not a wandering empty shell of a man wanting to both remember and forget.

Because, if Slade wasn't here, if he was just another damned trick of his sorry mind, then he's really losing it. He can't. He doesn't want to. Losing it would be too easy. He doesn't deserve easy.

"Grayson," was the only response. Dick shudders, a tell-tale crack before he opens his eyes and tips his head back, raising the bottle.

Except another hand covers his – warm, alive – and pulls the bottle away, gentle and firm. Dick doesn't fight him – he knows he should, nobody gets to tell him what to do with his life – but he doesn't, he just sits there and watch the veins on the back of Slade's hand run up a strong but bare arm.

The bottle is placed a bit of a distance from him, and the hand disappears from atop his. He stops himself from reaching out for it, anything to stave the cold away.

"What are you doing here?" He asks, voice quiet. In another time – almost another life – he would be up on his feet, ready to jump into a battle with the man, a heated confrontation that slowly turned into an exhilarating spar that had Dick – no, Robin, Nightwing – fighting a grin from forming. Right now, he's fine with sitting down and the realization that he's not alone. Not for a while.

"Why do you ask?" Slade responded, voice just as quiet, but the baritone sits in the pool of Dick's stomach. He wants to turn, to map the mercenary's face, but he refuses to look at him. He doesn't know why, even when his entire body wants to. He grimaces. He knows why. Looking at Slade, at that face, would just bring back all the years he's tried to forget, the memories he's kept under lock and key – the times he'll never go back to.

"Are you here for me?" He retorted, his face turned slightly to the man, but his gaze is on the other's boots.

A beat of silence. "What if I said yes?"

Without his consent, his lips turn up into a bad imitation of a smile. "Should have said no. You're wasting your time here."

"Am I?" Curiousity.

"Two things, Slade," Dick hears himself say, raising his hand up and showing two fingers. "If you're here for me, then that means two things. You're either here to take me back, or you're here to kill me."

He drops his hand and lets it rest on the cold ground. "And, honestly, I don't give a shit what you want to do to me."

His words are callous – well, maybe, not so much, when it comes to the fleeting exchanges between him and the mercenary – but brittle.

Slade doesn't answer immediately. Dick just sits there, back against the wall, and staring up at the dark sky. He's not sure what time it is – probably sometime after midnight, not that it really matters. The listlessness is the same no matter what the clock hands show. It's one of the few constants that he has left.

"You were gone for a year, Grayson." There's a question in that – and Dick knows that Slade knows that it's obvious. The man wants to know, and he's not hiding it. No evasion, no underhanded questions, subterfuge and semantics.

No bugs, no tracks. Dick knows. It's the same thing he keeps remembering and seeing every time his eyes remain closed for more than a minute. It must frustrate people like Slade, a mercenary with an almost unnatural attention to detail, for one of his little birds to turn into smoke, leaving no direction as to where he had gone. He can see it, see Slade as someone who needed to control, to have the power to manipulate the scales to whichever direction he wanted it to. Well, shit. He'll have to live with it, live with Dick Grayson disappearing on him.

"Is that failure I hear, Deathstroke?" Dick taunts, sneering. He doesn't have it in himself to feel the slightest bit of humor, everything is inky, oozing ugliness. "Or incompetence? Ashamed that your little bugs and tricks couldn't find me? Did you miss me or something?"

The last word is barely out of his mouth when a hand grabs his jaw, tight enough to bruise, and turns his head to face the man. Dick doesn't fight it, the press of Slade's fingers against his jaw an almost welcome reprieve from the bitterness.

"Look at me," the mercenary said. His voice was still even, but steel echoed underneath the words. "Grayson, look at me."

In spite of himself, Dick obeyed. He would like to reason that it's because he doesn't want a confrontation, but some deeper, sick part of him was desperate for someone else to take the reins. The irony is ugly – a mirror of the precursor of all the shit that he's had to go through. Isn't that what he wanted then—for another person to take control?

That small desire spilled the greatest amount – or maybe just the starkest red – of blood.

His eyes flit over the strong jaw, the scruffy chin and stubble running up the mercenary's jaw, up to the prominent cheekbones and the piercing grey eye, the other covered by a black eyepatch. Snow-white hair was combed back, cut slightly from the last time Dick had seen Slade without his mask. It just occurred to him, as he takes in the countenance of his once-nemesis, that Slade is also seeing him for the first time in a long while.

He doesn't know what the man is thinking, Slade had always been hard to read…or maybe it was just that he refused to read whatever it was in the man's eye. Something was there, some emotion – some shadow of it – was present as the man takes every detail of Dick's face, knowing that the changes were distinct, obvious.

"You disappeared for a year, Grayson," Slade repeated, voice low and words spoken evenly. Dick raised a brow, finding it difficult to respond with the mercenary's death grip on his jaw. "You disappeared, Bruce Wayne is found with a bullet in his head, his multi billionaire company collapses and Gotham's economy with it and I find you here, with more alcohol than blood in your body and picking fights in dark alleys. You've been lost, little bird."

—and there.

Out in the open, in the air. The words, all of them. Spoken clinically, no emotion in Slade's voice as he recounted each little thing like one would do a grocery list, each syllable carving a deeper hole in Dick as if he wasn't a gaping maw of a person already.

It's not like he needs the reminder. It's not like he doesn't remember it – all of it – everytime he sees himself in the mirror. It's not like he doesn't recall every second of it, every breath he's breathed as he held the gun against his guardian's head, at the surety of the trust in Bruce's eyes – I know you're not going to do it, Dick. I know you – and the listlessness, the easiness of allowing himself to listen and obey the hypnotic words, a choice that he could make and make it he did. The greatest singular failure.

"Get away from me," Dick snarls, pushing himself away from Slade, from the flagrant reminder of everything he's ever failed. His steps are no longer even, his balance off, but he manages to remain standing. "Get away from me."

"So that you can drown yourself? Wallow in self-pity? Run like a coward?" Barbs. Slade's questions were barbs, intending for Dick to upset himself and explode. If it hadn't gone this long, Dick would have fallen for it – welcomed it even.

A year was too long. When you've gone so long without trusting – yourself, least of all – and have kept on by the skin of your teeth, petty anger can only wrap you in a cloak of fire for so long before it gets snuffed out, leaving only a hollowness that promised to stay forever.

"Yes." Dick answered. "Yes, Slade. Leave me alone."

He extends his arms out, facing the mercenary, before turning around and walking towards the apartment. His gait is uneven, his footfalls loud even in the dead of night, against the cold of the asphalt, and he doesn't care. He sways from time to time, his world tilting slightly, but Dick doesn't fall. He manages to steady himself at a nearby lamppost, breathing, the throbbing returning. He doesn't expect it to go away. He knows he doesn't deserve a break.

He doesn't know if Slade followed him, or allowed him to walk away. A part of Dick doesn't want Slade to follow him – the man was just bad news, everything he's ever done wrong rearing back to rub it in his face.

Another part—

A small, broken part—

That small part of him wants to see a familiar face – even if it's that of his once-greatest foe – and even if Dick is at his lowest, he wants that familiarity. He doesn't…he doesn't want to be alone. He's so tired and exhausted and lonely and he just wants to not feel like a disgusting piece of shit for once.

He just wants to feel like how he used to be, flying through the air and across Gotham's skyline. Freedom, possibility – all of it – rushing by as the wind carries him upward. Bit by bit, he's starting to forget how that feels like.

All he sees in the mirror is the powerful itch to rip the skin off his own face.

He manages to make it to the building without collapsing, or his legs giving way. He doesn't turn to the alley to see if the man who tried to the rape the kid had gone or died. He just needs to crawl into the silence of his room and fall into inky black sleep, if for a minute.

The apartment hall is dark, but Dick knows where his is even if he were blind. He makes straight for the end of the hall, past the stairs, near the garbage chute. The smallest room in the entire building, but it's not like Dick needs much. Just somewhere to disappear to.

He pushes the door open, unsure if he locked it today before leaving, and foregoes turning the lights on. He doesn't need to see what he knows will be there, anyway. No need to feel a hundred pair of baleful eyes glaring at him from every corner of the room.

Dick almost trips on something, probably a bottle or yesterday's take-away, but he manages to continue until he manages to feel for the chair by the small table in the corner. Feeling its back, he slowly takes off the coat and sets it over the table.

There's a creaking sound – the door slowly being pushed open – and Dick grips the chair tight as light floods into the room.

"Grayson." He doesn't know what it is in Slade's voice – if it's pity, disgust or triumph – coloring the man's even tone. Dick doesn't need to turn to know what the mercenary is seeing – the remains of an empty shell of a man without anything to lose, and the fallout of failure.

Dick turns to him, not finding the energy to feel anything but the echoing regret that he's fastened himself to for a long, long year. Slade is looking at him – not through him or past him, but at him – and he doesn't know what makes him open his mouth, what makes him want to tell, to talk, to just confess everything. He barely reins himself in, mouth parted but nothing escaping. All around them, on the walls, the windows, every corner of it, are the demented drawings of the same figure – a handsome man and a baleful face and red. Red. Red. So much red.

"Do you know what shame and guilt feels like?" Dick asks him. "When it's ugly and shitty and it's oozing out of you like a black pit because that's all you are?"

Slade doesn't answer him, not when Dick lets go of the chair and comes up to him. The man is still a foot taller than him, but Dick doesn't care as he grabs the man's collar, tight. He doesn't pull Slade down, just holds on to the collar like a lifeline. "Do you know what it feels like when you're forced to destroy everything you love?"

He doesn't expect an answer from the man, but he receives one anyway. "Yes."

The grasp on Slade's collar grows tighter. "I just—I had a choice. Everything I did, every move I made, I had a choice. Every second I had that gun pointed at Bruce, I had a choice."

He grits his teeth and he feels the wound on his lip reopening. Guilt tastes like blood. "And I made the wrong one and I have to live with it."

He looks up at the man, uncaring that the prickle has returned to his eyes or that his grip is trembling or that the words rushing out are anguished. Slade doesn't break eye contact, looks back at him calmly, not hiding from the carnage. "Yes, Slade. I'm a coward. I ran. It's not that I don't know that, okay?"

And he laughs – Dick laughs, and it's not the lighthearted humorous laughter that used to have Bruce rolling his eyes. It's dark, ugly and mocking. "Not so wonderful for the Boy Wonder, is it? Prince fuck-up and a first-degree murderer. Can't get any better than that."

Slade doesn't laugh, though. He just stares and stares and has Dick never noticed how his eye looks like molten fire in the face of amber lamplight? Or the strength and vitality flushing in those cheeks? That even if Slade was older – far older than Dick can ever guess – he seemed to thrum with life, with willpower. Dick wished he had even a sliver of that.

"You asked if I drink to remember or forget, right?" Dick asks him, leaning close, letting his head tilt until his forehead rests against the man's shoulder, still gripping the collar tight. He doesn't know what he's doing, why he's resting against one of the world's notorious criminals but he doesn't care. He just wants to feel human, for once.

His words are mumbled through the man's shirt. "I drink to remember the color of his blood and I drink to forget the way he looked at me that night."

He doesn't word out the recoil of the gun in his hand, the way it fell from his grasp as the realization of what he did overpowered whatever hypnosis was on him. He doesn't word out the way he had fallen to his knees and scrambled over Bruce, his own hands turning red as he ran them over his guardian – his goddamn father – and felt like someone had ripped his still-beating heart from his chest. He doesn't word out the echoing commands that could no longer hold him fast ("Get back here, Richard. Get back here. Don't walk away from me."). The ecstasy he felt at obeying the commands had gone sour and bitter, and the only thing he could do was turn around and run.

Because that's what he is. A coward. A murderer.

"Some days, I'm strong enough to forget." He could hear the beat of Slade's heart and wonders when his own had stopped working. "Some days, I'm weak enough to remember."

Dick turns his head up, slowly, like each movement was exhausting, and he finally allows himself to raise his left hand, to let his fingers settle against the strong jaw and feel Slade's stubble. The man tenses a bit, eye turning wary as he continues to look at Dick. "I bought a gun. Did you know that? Hmm, I'm sure you did. The drawer is open and it's there."

Slade doesn't answer, doesn't turn to the door where a small, rickety cabinet stood, with the drawer half-open. He doesn't move, and his breathing is in the same pace, but Dick can almost delude himself into thinking that the rapid beating of the man's heart was borne out of worry for Dick and not for his own being. Almost.

"It's not for you," he tells the man. After all, he was ready to throw away everything he ever knew in a chase for the last few lanterns that guided him in the darkness. "It's for…"

What could he say?

For when he was strong enough to go after the man who started it all, the man whose face littered every centimeter of the room and every shadow that lurked in the recesses of Dick's mind? For when he was strong enough, angry enough, vengeful enough to avenge his dead guardian and end it all? For what?

Irony. Dick himself doesn't even know what for.

It's funny.

So many things are funny when you're so fucking wrecked that the world's blurring to black at the edges, and every movement feels like tipping sickly on a tossing ship—like wading through molasses with gauze over your eyes. In your eyes. Scratchy and obstructive, and the bile just sort of settles halfway up your throat and stays there, sloshing with the angle of the deck.

"I didn't know where to go." Dick admitted, half-leaning into the man's chest now, his left hand resting on the line where neck meets shoulder. "I didn't know what to do."

All he knew was crawling away from Bruce's body, his vision blurred until he felt warmth run down his cheeks.

"You had a place to go, little bird. You didn't have to run and hide, only to wither away." Slade answered, and Dick felt a hand settle on his waist, holding him steady. The touch – of another person, on him, in so long – has him shuddering, his breath ragged.

"Where, Slade?" He looked at the mercenary, at the stoic expression on his face and the golden tinge of his gaze. "Where could I have gone? With all the blood on my hands, who could I have gone to?"

The mercenary doesn't answer, continues to look back at Dick until the realization settles in and—

It's just stupid, isn't it? It's just really stupid how Dick finally has the answer when he's gone long past the question, when he's long settled at the bottom in the ocean of regret and a light finally breaks through the darkness. How many times had he sat in this room, facing the darkness and asking the same question over and over? How many times had he sat there, wondering if a time will come when he won't taste smoke and ash in his mouth and glass in his throat?

He doesn't know what to say, what to even think. The light rends the sharpness of the mercenary's features into something pliant, enough to even call 'soft'. Would you have been there for me?

Or the better question. Why weren't you there in the first place?

A childish need to displace blame. An immature desire to run away from responsibility.

Had Slade been there, would Dick have accepted that?

He doesn't answer, doesn't voice aloud the questions in his head. You're here, now. That's not what was important. Dick held no illusions - his demons have rooted themselves far too closely. It was impossible to let go, now. Yet - for a moment - if he could forget, could pretend he wasn't lost—

That, in spite of the ugliness and the blood and the penances, he could pretend he was beyond all that—

That this was just another rooftop against a moonlit sky—

Another mission, another life, another moment where he stood across a grey-eyed, white-haired mercenary—

Maybe, if he could pretend, it'd be enough to get him by.

"Okay," he says. Quietly. Almost reverently. He lets go of the collar and tangles his fingers in the man's hair, feels the softness of it - his skin against the white of Slade's hair - and repeats, not looking away from the heated gaze. "Okay."

Dick stands on his toes, feels Slade tighten his grip on his waist, and presses his lips against the other.

And Slade—

—kisses back.

There are times where he once imagined how it'd feel like, to kiss a man, to want someone, to feel good. He once tried to imagine how it'd feel like if it was someone important, someone that defined who he was, that nobody could take away from the equation without crushing the synapses that held him together. He filed that away, an opportunity he was no longer allowed to want.

This wasn't like that. Slade had defined who he was, in every encounter, in every meeting. The bruises that glared like badged of honor, the wit and the jeers that Dick responded to with fervor. This was no fairy-tale kiss - no fireworks in the sky and the promise of forever.

This was pain and distraction and the desperate need to feel alive.

Slade's grip tightened, another hand making its way to the space between his shoulder blades and, God, he was encased in the mercenary's arms, wasn't he? Not that he could notice, with the way Slade took control of the kiss, angling his head one way, and Dick holding on and letting go at the same time.

His eyes had fallen shut, all his senses bombarded with the taste and scent and touch of the man. There was the scent of something that reminded him of forests and rocky mountainsides — cedar, or sandalwood — and, well, Dick couldn't really be bothered to categorize tastes when all he feels is Slade's front against his and the bruising, encompassing way he kissed.

Everything else—just sorts of fall into oblivion, save for the tendrils of searing hot red running from his lips down to each vein and artery. The cold doesn't penetrate his skin, it sorts of settles outside of it, on the fringes of where it cannot reach. The silence around them fades into puffs of breath, and the glaring red eyes just fades into a miasma of scarlet, indistinct enough for Dick to let himself go and tumble into sandalwood warmth.

Somehow, his hands fall from the collar to the buttons of Slade's shirt, and, somehow, gravity falls in reverse and he feels the mattress on his back. He can blame it on physics and motion, or the amount of alcohol in his veins and head, and maybe blame the way Slade's lips run from his, down to his jaw and to his temple. A hand makes its way to his hair, combing it away from his eyes and Slade's looking down, that grey-eyed gaze awash in gold, heat tumbling in that singular look that steals whatever breath is left in Dick's lungs.

This could be a moment — a snippet where he could whisper the names of the devils plaguing him and banish them, a moment where he could recount the minutes and seconds and days and years that led to this.

Dick closes his eyes and winds his arms around Slade's shoulders, leaning up to kiss him. His hands move from above the shirt, to run down Slade's front, feeling the buttons and the pattern of the threading on the front, unlocking, until the lapel falls to the side and he runs his hands down Slade's front.

"Heroes don't sleep with the bad guys, little bird." Perhaps it's the grittiness of the voice, or the timber of it – the light graze of Slade Wilson's lips against the lobe of his ears – that makes him arch against the mercenary, his hands pressing into the skin of the man's back, itching for comfort. Perhaps it's the softness of his touch on Dick's cheek, a blinding contrast to the past, where caresses turned to jabs and an almost-obvious anticipation in their battles on the rooftops of the Gotham skyline. Perhaps it's the memory of it all – a time almost forgotten, one not wrapped in nightmares.

"I'm not a hero," Dick blurts out, a feather above the silence, and the honesty – for a moment – has him recalling stark red against hardwood panel flooring, a steady gun in his hand. Guilt broils over, seeping into his veins, one of the few lanterns still lighting his way through the darkness.

Forgiveness, after all, is an impossible thing to earn.

But forgiveness is the last thing on his mind, and if it's forgiveness he's aiming for, he's gone long past his chances. He bucks his hips up as hard as he can, aiming right for Slade's to press the mercenary's hand in between their bodies—and God, that feels even better than he fucking thought—

And it's wild, because he never had the slightest idea how unbelievably addicting it is, coaxing noises like that—noises like the ones Slade's making, low and shameless and shivery; noises like the ones that keep tearing their way up and out of his throat no matter how hard he tries to swallow them for the sake of something like useless dignity—out of a person like Slade. Slade is composed, stoic and controlled - and Dick is on the wrong end of the spectrum, on the precipice of self-destruction.

Affecting him like this is dizzyingly good, almost impossibly so. Never, in a million years, did Dick imagine that he could even phase the man - or maybe it's just another figment of his pathetic imagination, grasping on to the edges of humanity and being alive and the unforgettable heat.

That's what he wants. That's just about all he wants right this second—the heat. The heat of his own blood; of the fire; of the room; of Slade's skin and eyes and mouth and hands and fingertips, and the choked-off hiss he makes when Dick scrabbles for a grip on the shirt he was halfway through undoing and hitches his body up to savor the unmistakable, undeniable, indescribable outline of the mercenary's erection pushing at his pants—

—and, for this moment, he doesn't care what happens next. All the blood and the anger and the regret is at the door, edging in, ready to run past the jamb and drown him in their strength after all is said and done and Dick knows, knows that this won't change anything for the better, but only for the worse. Yet, he can only open his arms and welcome that prospect, if it meant that he can pretend he's more than just existing, just keeping on.

And he must know what he does to people—someone like Slade, whose whole long-game master-plan relies on his uncanny ability to read everyone around him and guide them in the direction that he wants. He must know what he does—what he's capable of. He must have known that Dick would melt in his fucking hands.

He must know - Dick thinks, believes - because there's no other explanation for the way Slade is slowly pulling his shirt away, where Dick's eyes run at every fading scar, every long-healed bullet hole in an unkillable body. When those same hands run at the edge, at the sliver of his own skin from under his shirt, Dick tenses and grabs the other's hand.

"No, no, not now, not tonight," he whispers, and if it weren't for the utter silence from the mercenary's end, he would not have been able to hear himself. He's not ready - never will be - because he knows what's underneath is ugly, and disgusting. What's underneath are distinct ribs and scars with stories that Dick can never impart, and just the whole package of trash that he was. He knows that, knows it intimately but he doesn't want to soil it, not tonight. Not when this is his only chance in the long run to feel something other than the numbness or the bite of the cold.

Slade doesn't say anything — settles for eyeing him, maybe in askance or in contemplation. Dick knows the other is strong enough to rip it from him, but he's not, and his heart learns to beat again. There's a nod, almost infinitesimal, before Slade leans back down to kiss him and Dick allows himself to tumble into the fire, face-first.

Dick takes one breath, and then another.

It's not like Slade knows. Or maybe it's because Slade does know—truer—than most people. It's not like Slade hasn't seen what Dick has seen—the absence; the hacked-off emptiness of the reality of what isn't there. Not just the cold reminder of everything he's failed. Not just the amber-coloured liquid in a glass bottle that helps even him to forget, sometimes, what he really lost. What he really is, and what he really isn't.

Slade leans back up and looks at him for a long, long moment more, long enough for Dick to know that maybe he understands, maybe he can sympathize; that he gets it—he understands that it's all been a waterfall of failures, where the shallow end is the only place he ever starts to drown. When this is moving fast enough—when what he feels is overpowering the feelings—he can handle it, and it's great, actually; he likes it. Slade's been paying attention—he noticed that, just now; he's Slade; he'll have figured it out.

And then he ducks down and presses his mouth right in against Dick's pulse point, almost too hard and with a hint of an edge of teeth, and right as Dick tilts his head back, both of those deft hands dart up and flicker over the fastenings, and—

It's easier, and it's good—Slade's mouth on his bite-bruised neck; grazing one hip and then the other; tracking once again along the insides of his thighs, and then there's a growl resonating up out of Slade's throat at the way Dick's spine arches up off of the mattress—

And it's enough— enough to make him shut his eyes and gasp aloud, enough for his mind to fizzle out to white static save for the feeling of Slade's lips on his skin. If this is the precipice, then he allows himself to fall. Freefall. Carried by gravity all the way until his body hits the ground in a bloody heap.

Dick tries to growl, and Slade starts to chuckle, but then the hand in his hair starts to shift just as Slade's free one pulls on his hip, and it's the work of a gasp and an instinctual twist to flip his body, and then—

Slade starts kissing down his back, so fucking slow—

Until he gets to Dick's ass and kisses even slower.

But, God, if that mouth on his skin doesn't feel like fucking absolution all beyond his reach.

Both of Slade's hands shift underneath his chest, lifting gently until he's up on his knees, and he automatically sweeps his left arm in and props his weight on his elbow. Slade's voice washes over him from the base of his spine, pouring up towards his ears again, and how is it that the low purr under every syllable still isn't breaking apart every sinew of his skin?

Slade doesn't waste time, not in the hurried sound of the zipper being undone, or in the quiet pants that echo in the silent room.

He sinks in all the way to the fucking hilt and bends forward, aligning his torso with Dick's back—and the weight on him, over him, all over him—that feeling of being surrounded—is so dizzyingly good that Dick's breath sticks, and catches, and won't shiver free even as he twists his hips back and upward to rub them against Slade's, which earns him a long, throaty moan breathed hot against the back of his neck.

This isn't gonna take too long.

"Dick," Slade says, and it's fucking extraordinary—all the muscles in his stomach and his thighs are tensing where they're pressed against Dick's skin; sweat gathers slickly between their bodies, and there's nothing quite like this, is there? This particularly nasty-weird-gorgeous closeness; this merging of flesh—

Slade's right hand slips underneath him and curls around his cock—

—and his vision implodes, rushing white.

Warmth returns to his skin, inside him and over him and his elbows surrender, letting him fall. Everything blurs into a haze, everything - to the warmth of Slade's skin against his, to the buzz of the last vestiges of alcohol in his veins, to the almost-silent pounding of his head. He doesn't care, or even notice, the cum splattered on top of where he's lying. The only thing that mattered to him was the cocoon of warmth that pervaded all his senses.

There's movement, above and over him, and his eyes are almost half-shut, the call of sleep - of scream-filled nights promising him retribution - itching their way into his system, but he manages to grasp the ends of Slade's unbuttoned shirt, the man stilling beside him.

He doesn't say anything, doesn't ask anything of him. He doesn't have the right to ask anything of Slade, of anyone. All he can do is just wait for what he's given, what he's still allowed to have.

When Slade moves to lay back down, and when Dick feels the hand on his waist, not pulling him close, but enough to let him know that he's not alone - not tonight, not now. Some days, like this, it's enough.

His eyes close, and he doesn't dream.

* * *

"What do you plan to do with it?" Slade asks, hours later, when they're both awake. The mercenary is sitting up, his chest bare, and the flimsy blanket barely covering the rest of his naked skin. Dick turns to him, making out the look of contemplation in the near-darkness. Early morning light creeps through the crevices in between the boards that he used to cover the windows up. The shadows are thick, enough to hide most of the jeering faces painted on almost every surface.

He hears the real question beneath the voiced one. What do you do next?

The gun is cold in his hands.

Dick looks up at the ceiling, at the jeering face and the glowing red eyes. He recalls the sweetly-spoken words - the commands - and he remembers the feel of the gun in his hand as he pulls the trigger over and over. One body falls after the other, until the growing pile reaches even Wayne Manor.

It'd be so easy, to hold his finger over the trigger and press the gun against his head. It'd be so easy, to count to ten, and try to remember the proud smile on Bruce's face for every moment that he manages to live up to the man's expectations and pull the trigger. It'd be so easy, to be done with everything and disappear.

You're my good boy, right, Richard? You'd do anything I want you to, wouldn't you?

No. Easy was for those who deserved it. Easy was for those with hands not stained in blood. Easy was for those who didn't wake up screaming, reliving every moment he's pulled the trigger.

Dick Grayson didn't deserve easy. His ledger is crimson red, and nothing he can do can change that. The only thing left was to make sure that the line of blood ends.

He raises the gun and points it at the drawing, in between the the glowing red eyes and that ugly, hateful smile.

"Are you going back to Gotham?" He asks the mercenary. The beginning. Where it all started.

"Tonight." The response was delivered calmly.

There will be a time for regrets and penance later. There will be a time for making up, even the slightest, of the world-heavy weight of his sins. He has the rest of his life to pay back every drop of blood he's spilled.

Now, he has a target. Now, he has something to finish.

He has one last name to add.

"Good." He looks past the barrel of the gun and at the jeering face that has haunted every second of his life from the moment he pressed the gun against Bruce's head.

He pulls the trigger.

* * *

 **AN** : So, yeah, that was pretty much it. I know - there were some vague parts and it does feel very unfinished at the end. I was thinking of expanding this into an arc, maybe add parts to it later on, delving into what happened to Dick and what he decides for himself for the future. Well, let me know what you think!


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